Potholes keep work crews on their toes

Chickatawbut Road in the Blue Hills Reservation in Milton was closed because of potholes. (Yoon S. Byun/Globe Staff)

Beleaguered pothole repair crews were back out in force across Greater Boston yesterday after a one-two-three punch of heavy rain, hard freezes, and a round of thawing unleashed a fresh plague of tire-wrecking road craters.

A combination of severe potholes and flooding led officials to shut down two roads in the Blue Hills Reservation in Milton and Quincy yesterday morning. Chickatawbut Road between Routes 28 and 37, also called Randolph Avenue and Willard Street, and Wampatuck Road west of Bunker Hill Lane in Quincy were expected to remain closed through 9 a.m. today and possibly longer, depending on the difficulty of repairs, said Wendy Fox, a spokeswoman for the Department of Conservation and Recreation, which maintains the roads.

The Massachusetts Highway Department deployed 12 crews with 29 workers to fill and repair potholes in metropolitan Boston yesterday, spokesman Adam Hurtubise said. Department operators fielded more than 40 calls about newly formed potholes yesterday alone, he said.

State and municipal public works crews are calling this one of the worst winters ever for potholes, largely because of unusually heavy snow in December that melted, froze under pavement, and thawed last month, weeks before the usual late-winter warming cycle when sections of street collapse above melting underground ice, leaving potholes.

"Potholes always happen as a result of a freeze-thaw cycle," Hurtubise said. "As a result of the recent weather, we're seeing potholes pop up all over, so we're out there fixing them."

Jennifer Mehigan, a spokeswoman for Mayor Thomas M. Menino, said 12 patching crews used up just under 100,000 pounds of asphalt yesterday fixing potholes throughout the city.

Weather over the next four days could offer the right ingredients for still more potholes. The National Weather Service predicted that temperatures could hit 47 degrees in Boston today, enough to melt much of the accumulated snow, followed by a hard-freezing 15-degree low overnight, and high temperatures bouncing back to 42 Sunday and 52 Monday.